(Newser)
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A military jury has sentenced a former Marine drill instructor convicted of abusing recruits to 6 months in the brig, busted him to private, and ordered a bad-conduct discharge, the LA Times reports. Jerrold Glass, reportedly otherwise a model marine, was convicted of punching, slapping, and destroying the personal property of two dozen recruits in the biggest abuse case to hit the San Diego Recruit Depot in decades.

Some of the recruits who had testified to enduring Glass' abuse still spoke favorably of him to reporters, calling him "a good D.I." who "doesn't deserve this." The nature of boot camp can obscure the line between abuse and training: Glass' behavior was reported only after he beat a recruit over the head repeatedly with a pole in front the entire platoon.